I'm a Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, a writer here and there on this and that and strangely, one of the global experts on the metal scandium, one of the rare earths. An odd thing to be but someone does have to be such and in this flavour of our universe I am. I have written for The Times, Daily Telegraph, Express, Independent, City AM, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and online for the ASI, IEA, Social Affairs Unit, Spectator, The Guardian, The Register and Techcentralstation. I've also ghosted pieces for several UK politicians in many of the UK papers, including the Daily Sport.

Apple Wrongfoots Greenpeace over Renewable Power for the iCloud

It’s only a month back that Greenpeace slammed Apple for using “dirty” coal fired electricity to power the iCloud data centre in Maiden, North Carolina. Apple has now come back with plans to power the entire site with renewables. One could say that they’ve done this because Greenpeace agitated for them to do so. But that would be very silly indeed because plans of this type do not get made in only a month. Sorry, but these sorts of engineering projects take much longer than that.

Apple’s data center in Maiden, North Carolina, will draw about 20 megawatts of power at full capacity. We’ll be producing an unprecedented 60 percent of this power onsite. To do that, we’re building what will be the nation’s largest private solar arrays and the largest non-utility fuel cell installation operating anywhere in the country. That’s a scale of onsite renewable energy production that no other company has matched. Onsite energy generation minimizes our dependence on the grid and reduces our environmental impact. And when our solar arrays and fuel cells are operating, Apple’s Maiden data center will be the most environmentally sound data center ever built.

The other 40% of the energy will be purchased from local and regional renewable power suppliers.

The part that is most interesting to me, seeing as I deal with scandium, is that they’re getting that “largest non-utility fuel cell system” from Bloom Energy. And Bloom Energy uses scandium in their fuel cells: it’s the most efficient material to use on the actual plates that make up the cells of all possible materials. I should perhaps point out here that while I have indeed spoken to Bloom on this subject I have no business relationship with them: this is something I know about because of what I do, not something I know about because I’m doing it.

The reason for a fuel cell system is that of course the Sun does not shine at night. Nor does the wind blow (a likely source of some of their bought in energy) all of the time. So the fuel cell can be used to act almost as a back up generator.

There’s a larger interesting point that can be made here too. It is actually possible to overstock on solar/wind generation. To use that excess electricity (obviously, only excess when the wind is blowing just right, or the Sun shining) to electrolyse water by passing it through a fuel cell and then store the resultant hydrogen. This gets around the great problem of a hydrogen economy, the transport of it (it leaks through steel pipes for example). When the wind isn’t blowing, the Sun not shining, then that hydrogen can be fed back through the fuel cell to produce the needed electricity.

Yes, of course there are energy leakages in such a system: no getting around the laws of thermodynamics. However, it is my considered opinion as one on the fringes of the whole renewables business that this is actually how we’re going to be dealing with climate change a decade or two hence. Solar continues to get cheaper, there’s no real reason why we won’t see another 50-80% cut in costs over the next decade or two. Fuel cells are still expensive but that price will come down too. The essential technology is subject to an analogue of Moore’s Law just as solar cells are. We’re trying to print a circuit on a board after all.

I can see both of these technologies becoming cheap enough that they’ll be the combination of choice for both domestic and commercial use. They’ll not power a blast furnace, sure, but electricity and thus both heating and cooling, and lighting (plus of course data server farms and so on) could well be powered this way. It just needs the two major components to be cheap enough to overcome those darn laws of thermodynamics.

Oh, and did you know that you can run a standard internal combustion engined car, with a very little tweaking, on that very hydrogen?

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Apple’s plans to make their data centers green, with solar, bio-gas and other strategies, have been made public all through the development of the facility. Greenpeace’s complaints, as usual, were unwarranted. They were designed to convince low research “journalists” and bloggers that their complaints resulted in a greener Apple plant, even though (as noted here) this is not the kind of project that can be done without years of planning.

“One could say that they’ve done this because Greenpeace agitated for them to do so. But that would be very silly indeed because plans of this type do not get made in only a month.”

You are either an ignoramus or intellectually dishonest: Apple itself stated that the data center would be using only partialy renewable energy back in April, then claiming that it would nonetheless use 50% more renewable energy than previously planed, the decision to add even more solar panels to make it 100% renewable was thus a -PR- decision made during the month that followed. Trying to spin it otherwise is just you ignoring the known facts and Apple’s own statements, prefering to push your crass ideological spin, like all propagandists.

Apple’s own statement in April, debunking completely the spin of that dishonest drivel:

“Our data center in North Carolina will draw about 20 megawatts at full capacity, and we are on track to supply more than 60 percent of that power on-site from renewable sources including a solar farm and fuel cell installation which will each be the largest of their kind in the country,” said spokeswoman Kristin Huguet. “We believe this industry-leading project will make Maiden the greenest data center ever built, and it will be joined next year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100 percent renewable energy.”

So they were planning for 60% of renewable energies in North Carolina, and now they took the decision to push it to 100%, just under a month and more probably in part in response to Greenpeace activism…